Relentless pursuit of customer satisfaction

Our main businesses – Irish Life Retail, Irish Life Corporate Business and permanent tsb - have customer satisfaction programmes in place. Irish Life Retail and permanent tsb use an independent research company – The Leadership Factor - to track customer satisfaction levels each year. Actions are taken to address the issues raised by customers in the research. Irish Life Corporate Business track service levels directly with brokers and also use independent research from Milward Brown IMS.

	Customer Satisfaction Programme Updates

Irish Life Retail Intouch Customer 1st In the last quarter of 2008, the Intouch programme was extended to include all departments in Irish Life Retail and was renamed "Intouch Customer 1st". The aim is to bring all staff together to improve customer satisfaction for both external and internal customers. Customer satisfaction index In 2008, we changed the basis of the customer satisfaction Index from a once a year survey to a month-on-month transaction-focused questionnaire. We now seek feedback from customers who have experienced one of five interactions with us - New Business, Financial Review, Customer Service Centre, Withdrawal or a Complaint. This allows us to react much more quickly to customer feedback. Financial Planning In October 2008, we began a "Mystery Shopping" exercise with our financial advisers in the permanent tsb bancassurance sales channel. To date, all financial advisers have received a mystery shopper who then gives feedback on the entire financial review process to us. This is done via "Optimum Contact", a UK company that specialises in helping businesses optimise their engagement with customers. We measure the financial advisers across a number of key competencies including compliance, professionalism and customer service. The results to date have shown that we are rated as follows; Professionalism 96%, Product Knowledge 88%, Customer Service 98% and Compliance 89%. Irish Life Corporate Business Actions taken in 2008 to improve service included: Migration of pensioners to a new payroll system: We developed a more efficient payroll service for c. 30,000 pensioners whose pensions and tax we process each month. The new system also allows more customer-friendly style of communication. Implementation of a new worktracking system: We implemented a new system that changes the way work is tracked and allocated to people working in Corporate Business. This will help us continue to deliver substantial service improvements every year. Enhancement of our on-line services: In late 2008, we began work to improve our existing on-line services. Including providing interactive services for our customers and intermediaries. The first phase of the programme will be delivered in April 2009. Irish Life Corporate Business also commissions an independent yearly survey of brokers and consultants to assess their levels of satisfaction with insurance companies operating in the group business area. This survey is carried out by Millward Brown IMS. Irish Life Corporate Business topped the survey again in 2008, although the satisfaction level fell by 2.7% against the 2007 result. Also, the gap between Irish Life Corporate Business and the second ranked company narrowed in 2008. permanent tsb Customer Central is the customer satisfaction programme in permanent tsb. Customer Central ambassadors: In 2008, we appointed 150 Customer Central "Ambassadors" - one for every branch and central department. The aim is to embed the programme throughout the bank. In addition, almost 1,000 days of formal customer service training were delivered with the aim of showing every member of staff the role they had to play in driving the Customer Central agenda. Customer service awards: We have monthly and yearly customer service awards where staff who make a special effort are recognised by our customers and are formally acknowledged. Service level agreements: We have developed internal service level agreements between the central support areas and the staff dealing directly with customers to make sure that the quality of our service is matching our customer expectations. We also introduced an internal customer satisfaction survey to allow our branches to rate the quality of service provided by the support departments. This allows us focus on areas of greatest impact. Moments of Truth: ‘Moments of Truth’ are key customer interactions with members of staff that have an important influence on the attitude of the customer to permanent tsb. We have begun to examine these in detail using Lean/Kaizen continuous improvement methodologies. We are developing an approach that will make sure that we have consistency throughout the bank in how we handle these interactions. In June 2008, we formally launched our first two Moments of Truth. We launched the programme through our BBTV internal communications system and we followed this up with training using our Customer Central Ambassadors. Measuring the Impact: We have three methods of assessing our performance on customer service: Our annual Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) where 2,500 customers are asked their views on our service across 28 measures of performance Our nightly surveys of customers on Moments of Truth where customers are asked to comment on their branch experiences within 24 hours of attending the branch (10,000 customers surveyed in 2008) Participation in a pan European retail banking service quality study involving 40 other banks in 17 countries The results from all of these indicate that our customers rate us very highly, are extremely loyal and are well disposed to recommending us to their friends, family and colleagues.

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	Plain English

The Plain English Campaign is an organisation that specialises in testing the text and layout of documents for ease of understanding. It awards a Crystal Mark for documents that meet their standards. The Crystal Mark is recognised internationally as a symbol of clarity. To meet these standards, each piece of literature is panel tested with a group of adults in Ireland to make sure that they understand what they are reading. The Crystal Mark is valid for two years. This means the document must be submitted again to the Plain English campaign for inspection and renewal of the Crystal Mark. We recognise that financial products by their nature can be difficult for people to understand. Research that we conducted in 2005 found that 7 out of 10 adults in Ireland claim that they don’t read financial product brochures due to the use of jargon and small print. Anything we can do that helps to improve clarity and understanding is welcome. “Our progress so far on the introduction of Plain English is as follows: 1998: Irish Life Retail product brochures awarded the Plain English Crystal Mark 2004: Irish Life Retail awarded the Plain English Honesty Mark for core product brochures 2005: permanent tsb core product brochures awarded the Plain English Crystal Mark 2006: Majority of all permanent tsb customer correspondence achieved Plain English Crystal mark“ Irish Life Retail: is the only financial company in Ireland and the UK to have “Plain Englished” its full product suite of literature. was the first financial services company in Ireland and the UK to be awarded the Honesty Mark. has the highest number of Honesty Marks held by any company, anywhere in the world. The Honesty Mark Trust is an important issue in any industry, but is particularly significant for financial services. Customers need to know they have all the facts at their fingertips. The Honesty Mark gives customers this confidence. The Honesty Mark is a further enhancement to the Plain English mark. It is a tangible guarantee to our customers that everything in the literature is true, is not contradicted by any other document and is written in an upfront manner. Transparency of Charging Also, in each one of our 103 permanent tsb branches we have brochures on display setting out details of personal and business banking charges. Product Snapshot In line with our policy of making our products as transparent as possible, we have developed a ‘Product Snapshot’ for our retail life products to show the key features of a product at a glance. These include the level of risk attaching to the product and whether the initial amount invested is guaranteed or not.

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	Complying with regulations

2008 was mainly a year of bedding-in and monitoring the significant level of regulations introduced in previous years. Compliance departments around the group spent a significant amount of time making sure that the compliance procedures and processes introduced in 2007 were fully bedded-in and were operating effectively. In October 2008, the Credit Institutions (Financial Support) Act, 2008 was passed into law. This allowed the Government to introduce a guarantee arrangement for specified deposits, borrowings and debt of specified credit institutions (to be known as ‘Covered Institutions’). Subsequently, the Minister for Finance made an order designating the first group of banks and building societies to participate in the scheme and these included Irish Life and Permanent plc and its subsidiary Irish Permanent (IoM) Limited. The Act was later supplemented by regulations that contain detailed provisions and requirements to be complied with by the Covered Institutions. The Scheme requires each Covered Institution to comply with the Consumer Protection Code issued by the Financial Regulator and with the Irish Banking Federation Code of Practice on Mortgage Arrears. The Scheme provides that, every quarter, each Covered Institution must provide the Financial Regulator, on behalf of the Minister, with compliance certificates from: (i) its Chairman and Chief Executive jointly and (ii) its auditors, confirming compliance with all of the terms and conditions of the Scheme. The first such Certificate was provided for the quarter ended 31 December 2008, and sent to the Department of Finance on 13 February 2009. The Certificate was unqualified and confirmed material compliance with the relevant requirements. The accompanying external Auditor’s Certificate was also unqualified.

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